The great American myth of “rugged individualism” was invoked in the Feb. 17 letter, “Time to start acting like our forefathers.”

David R. Houck wrote, “Pioneers traveled west for months, across a continent, to improve their prospects. The government did not provide anything for them.” He is wrong.

Historian Stephanie Coontz, in her 1992 book “The Way We Never Were,” described how the government helped and contributed to early American survival.

The West was not conquered by rifle-toting pioneers, but by the U.S. Army. The army defeated and cleared the land of Native Americans.

The government made massive land purchases, easing the conquest of those territories. It spent $15 million for the Louisiana Purchase, $25 million for the Texas-California purchase and $7 million for Alaska.

The government then sold this land below cost, at considerable loss to itself. The Preemption Act of 1841, the Graduation Act of 1854 and the Homestead Act of 1862 all gave away land to pioneers for a song.

The government also played a crucial role in developing these lands. Regarding canals connecting the Great Lakes to the Eastern Seaboard, the government funded or financially guaranteed three-fourths of the $200 million project. It also gave each state 30,000 acres of land to build agricultural colleges, which helped farmers develop a working agricultural economy. The government provided mail services like the Pony Express to interconnect this economy.

The government also built highways to the West and wired the country for telephone service. It also saved countless small farmers from foreclosure by giving them loans, and it began paying huge farm subsidies that continue to this day.

The major corporations settled the West, not the lone pioneers, often with vast government help. The government distributed a billion acres of land, of which only 147 million became homesteads. Sociologists Scott and Sally McNall estimate that “probably only one acre in nine went to the small pioneer.”

Railroad companies received 183 million acres. Four out of five transcontinental railroads were built in this way, and Congress approved loans up to $48,000 per mile to build them.

The West prides itself on being strongly anti-government. This denies reality. The West, in fact, has always been dependent on government. Stephanie Coontz concludes, “It would be hard to find a Western family today or at any time in the past whose land rights, transportation options, economic existence, and even access to water were not dependent on federal funds.”